Industry buzz: Animation about depression, repression

“Rocks in My Pocket” offers a look at suicide, depression and Soviet repression in Latvia. It’s an animated feature.

Those topics might seem dark for a cartoon, but “Rocks” filmmaker Signe Baumane, citing Iranian dramedy “Persepolis” and the war-themed animated feature “Waltz With Bashir” as inspirations, says: “The general public’s misconception about animation is that it’s for children, which is totally unfair. To me, animation is an amazing means to tell very adult stories because it allows you to deal with complex ideas through symbols and metaphors and abstraction.”

“Rocks in My Pockets” (opening Friday) refers to an incident when Baumane’s grandmother tried to drown herself by walking into a river. Baumane, who attempted suicide herself at age 18, says, “I think about sex every nine seconds, but there is this other train of thought that I have which is that every 12 seconds I think about wanting to erase myself. I think everybody has these kinds of thoughts, but they don’t discuss them. So I decided, 'OK, I’m going to make a feature film about this darker train of thought.’”

Baumane spent two years hand-drawing 30,000 images, sculpting 3-D papier-mache backdrops and voicing the narration. She modeled “Rocks in My Pockets” characters on members of her own family.

When “Rocks” screened this summer in Riga, Latvia, the material caused consternation. “Six hundred people came to (the) premiere, and 60 were my relatives,” Baumane says. “Many cried. One person walked out. But my mom is the biggest fan. She said, 'If anybody has a problem with the film, they have to come to me first and deal with me, because I’m going to defend the film until I die.’”

Baumane, who now lives in New York, says, “My mother realized over time that she almost lost me to this unsuccessful suicide because in my family there were no conversations about these feelings I had. Everybody was always in denial, like, 'Snap out of it.’ But I think people need to change their strategies and be more open about depression. When you just try to slap it away like a fly, it can turn into a monster that consumes you.”

Adventurers undeterred by the Virgin Galactic rocket plane disaster can try to win a $100,000 seat on a high-altitude flight, thanks to the makers of “Interstellar.” Moviegoers who buy a ticket to the space epic through the Fandango website qualify for the contest, running through Dec. 1.

The winner gets to be a passenger on the XCOR Lynx Mark II spacecraft, which flies at an altitude of 62 miles. Fandango marketing exec Adam Rockmore says, “There is certainly no bigger and better way to celebrate a movie event like 'Interstellar’ than to send one of our moviegoers on a life-changing journey to space.”

Before becoming a correspondent for “The Daily Show,” Aasif Mandvi took a shot at stardom under the direction of the late Ismail Merchant. Best known for producing “A Room With a View,” “Howards End” and other costume dramas directed by James Ivory, Merchant took the directorial reins when he cast Mandvi as the lead in the 2008 movie “The Mystic Masseur.”

Merchant seemed to thrive on chaos, according to Mandvi’s new memoir, “No Land’s Man.” “Ismail was this charismatic, larger-than-life Barnum and Bailey-type entrepreneur, ” says Mandvi. “Sometimes things would get screwed up during production, but he would barrel forward with this relentless ambition and enthusiasm.”

Though “The Mystic Masseur” fared poorly at the box office, Merchant made an impression on Mandvi. “To me, he was the epitome of that 'fake it ’til you make it’ spirit,” the actor says. “Ismail won Academy Awards ... when there were virtually no Indians working in Hollywood doing what he was doing. But Ismail just decided, 'I’m going to take this thing called Hollywood and excel within it, even though at some level I’ve been shut out from it.’”